Content
How to Verify the Expertise of Donor Websites
October 21, 2025
11 mins
Promoting a website without link building today is nearly impossible. However, after Google’s algorithm updates in 2024–2025, it became clear that the old approaches no longer work. Mass link purchases or publishing “anywhere you can” no longer help — they actually harm your rankings. The wrong donor sites can reduce your website’s credibility instead of boosting it.
So, how can you tell a high-quality donor site from a questionable one? In this article, we’ll explain what to look for to ensure your backlinks strengthen your website’s authority — not weaken it.
After Google’s Link Spam Update, the search engine made a major leap forward in understanding link quality. Its SpamBrain algorithm has learned to automatically detect low-quality backlinks. In the past, massive link purchases from dropped domains or PBN networks could slightly improve rankings — but today, they do more harm than good.
The improved SpamBrain doesn’t just analyze the link source; it also evaluates the full context — including page relevance, domain trustworthiness, and the naturalness of the anchor text. Anything that looks like an artificial attempt to influence rankings is now automatically recognized, and such links simply lose their weight.
Every donor website reflects your brand in Google’s eyes. Links from sources with no organic traffic, created solely for selling backlinks, or belonging to PBNs (Private Blog Networks) send a clear signal: this site is trying to manipulate the system.
On the other hand, backlinks from trusted, topic-relevant sources strengthen your site’s credibility and enhance E-E-A-T — Google’s framework for evaluating content quality, which considers Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
A poor-quality backlink profile can even trigger Google filters. When the algorithm detects a large number of artificial, irrelevant, or spammy links, it interprets them as manipulation attempts and reduces the domain’s overall trust. As a result, rankings drop, organic traffic declines, and sales may suffer.
Since it’s now clear that choosing a donor site requires a careful approach, we’ve prepared a checklist of key criteria to consider:
Choose websites that consistently rank high on Google for their core topics. If a site maintains stable top positions, it means its content and backlinks are valued by the algorithm. However, sudden ranking drops or frequent fluctuations may indicate penalties, algorithmic issues, or an unstable SEO strategy — all red flags when selecting a donor.
Traffic quantity matters, but quality is even more important. Ideally, organic traffic should account for at least 40% of the total. Also, make sure the audience comes from the same geographic regions where you promote your own website — traffic from irrelevant countries has little to no impact on local search visibility.
Use tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or SimilarWeb to analyze traffic dynamics over the past 12–24 months. Sharp spikes or drops may point to traffic manipulation, filters, or ongoing SEO problems.
Avoid placing backlinks on websites that mass-sell links through exchanges. If a donor site has too many outbound links, the value of your backlink will be minimal.
Instead, choose platforms with a moderate number of backlinks and a natural link distribution within the content. This helps ensure that your link retains weight and appears authentic to both users and search engines.
Another key step in evaluating a donor site’s authority is checking its indexation status. Use the operator site:domain.com to see how many pages are indexed by Google.
If there are very few indexed pages, or if most pages are missing from the index, this signals potential issues with the site’s content quality or technical SEO.
A simple yet powerful way to assess a donor site is to review its content. Articles should be unique, clear, and valuable for readers — free from grammatical errors, keyword stuffing, or spammy formatting. Pay attention to publication frequency, as regular updates show that the website is active and maintained. Also, look for authorship, dates, sources, and comments — these elements indicate expertise, transparency, and an engaged audience.
One of the most critical factors is relevance. Backlinks should come from websites that are logically connected to your niche. For example, a link from an automotive website won’t help promote an online home goods store.
Avoid sites from “grey” industries such as gambling, adult content, cryptocurrency, Forex, or similar niches. Google often classifies them as risky, and links from such sites can lower your domain’s trust level.
For a quick check, you can use this Google search command:
site:URL "porn" OR "casino" OR "gambling" OR "lotteries" OR "poker" OR "cryptocurrency" OR "forex" OR "bitcoins" OR "cbd"
Additionally, tools like Ahrefs can help you analyze which keywords the site ranks for, which pages generate organic traffic, and whether they’re relevant to your niche. This will help you understand if the resource is truly aligned with your topic and worth getting a backlink from.
A site’s technical performance and usability speak volumes about its reliability. Check the page load speed, mobile responsiveness, and ease of navigation.
It’s also helpful to ask the site owner for analytics data such as scroll depth, average session duration, and bounce rate. These metrics show whether users are genuinely engaging with the content — or simply opening a page and leaving right away.
The presence of toxic backlinks can be one of the main reasons for a drop in traffic and a decline in Google rankings.
Toxic backlinks are links from low-quality domains, expired sites, “grey” niches, or those with an unnatural anchor distribution.
If left unchecked, they can harm your SEO performance and even trigger Google filters.
The first step is to identify which backlinks are actually toxic. Use Google Search Console to collect a complete list of links pointing to your website.
Then analyze them and look for signs of “bad” backlinks, such as:
Once you’ve identified toxic links, it’s time to take action. Start by contacting website owners and asking them to remove the backlinks. If that’s not possible, use the Google Disavow Tool to inform the search engine that these links should not be considered when evaluating your site’s ranking.
Google Disavow Tool allows webmasters to tell Google to ignore specific low-quality backlinks when assessing a website’s authority. This helps SEO specialists control the impact of external links on search performance.
After cleaning your backlink profile, the next step is to gradually build new, high-quality backlinks from reputable media, relevant niche websites, forums, or partner resources. Focus on branded or non-anchor links, as they look more natural to Google and contribute to long-term credibility.
💡 Pro tip: Analyze where your brand is already mentioned online — and simply ask site owners to add a clickable link to your domain. It’s a simple yet highly effective way to strengthen your backlink profile without unnecessary costs.
For example, for our client — the international bridal fashion brand Ariamo — we used exactly this approach. The company regularly participates in global exhibitions such as Barcelona Bridal Fashion Week, National Bridal Market Chicago, and Melange de Blanc. The Promodo team analyzed the organizers’ websites and reached out to them to add backlinks to Ariamo wherever the brand was mentioned but not linked.
Removing toxic backlinks isn’t a one-time task — it requires regular monitoring and updates. To avoid issues in the future, we recommend:
This exact approach was applied to our client Cloudfresh, whose website suddenly lost rankings for branded and key priority queries in Google.
During a backlink analysis, we discovered that about 35% of the referring domains were toxic — potentially harming the site’s ranking and credibility.
To fix the issue, we:
Result: after these actions, the Cloudfresh website gradually regained its positions in Google and restored stable organic traffic.
To save time, money, and rankings, it’s better to build a smart link-building strategy from the start. Promodo’s qualified specialists will conduct a comprehensive audit and develop a high-quality link-building strategy that consistently increases your website’s trust and drives steady organic traffic growth.
Team Lead of Content for promodo.com
I’m a content marketing manager with over 9 years of experience in business writing. Currently, I lead the content team at promodo.com, where I focus on creating useful, well-researched content that supports marketing goals and helps businesses grow.
I enjoy working with data, expert opinions, and real insights to craft content that’s both relevant and easy to understand. I also have a solid background in SEO — I completed the Search Engine Optimization Course at Promodo Academy, which gave me hands-on skills in keyword research, content optimization, and improving visibility in search engines.
Whether it’s an article, blog post, or case study, I aim to make sure the content is clear, helpful, and aligned with both user needs and business objectives.
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